“If I go through un-birth, then all of that will be taken away from her. I can make the decision in favor of oblivion for myself. But now that also means making it for someone else, too. Two someone elses, really. I don’t know if I should do that or not. I mean, you’ve got to admit, it complicates things.”
“It complicates nothing. It magnifies the error of your existence. Doubles it: now two lives full of misery where only one stood before, as I’m sure your child’s life will be every bit as wretched as its father’s. Makes it all the more regrettable, makes things so much simpler.”
“That makes sense.”
“So come with me, if it makes sense.”
But there was something inside of you that didn’t care if it made sense. Maybe the something was that part of you that always wanted some connection to the world, but wouldn’t admit it to yourself. The part of you that knew that once the baby was born, you’d always be its father. That no one could ever take that away from you. That once the baby was born, Cressida would always be its mother, and that no one could take that away from her.
Or maybe that something was far less admirable: the part of you hell-bent on self-sabotage. The part of you that could never see any project through to its completion. The part of you that insisted on doing the wrong thing because it was the wrong thing.
Or maybe it was sheer lust: it had been so long since you’d gotten laid. You had to hold on to hope—however distant—that one day you might thrust your cock once again into Cressida’s cunt while clawing your fingernails into her shoulders. After all of this, it wasn’t likely you’d have many other takers.
You shook your head. “I’m not coming with you. I’m tempted to leave with you, just to escape and go off somewhere on the streets and hide. But what sort of life would that be? Always on the run. Lots of stress. I’m done with stress, you know. Besides, if I did that there wouldn’t be much hope of hearing about my kid.”
“I wouldn’t help you escape, just to escape. If you tried anything like that, I’d drag your ass back here. I’ll only help you get out of here so you can complete the Three-Fold Path. I’m not interested in aiding and abetting any old mundane escape attempt.”
“Then I’m definitely not interested. I’m going to see the legal process through. I’ve done a lot of things that could get me in serious trouble, but they’re not charging me with those things. They don’t know about those things. They’re only charging me with killing my mom. And I didn’t kill my mom. The trial will prove that. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“You fool! You don’t realize that once you renounce the Mouth, He will never again consider you for devouring. You will be like unto poison to Him—poison, that He was considering eating but didn’t. The mere sight of you will be like unto vomit to the Mouth. All this business about Cressida and the baby. Jesus Christ, it’s the schmaltziest thing I’ve heard in a long, long time. So that’s what you’re telling me—love conquers all?”
“Not love,” you said. Maybe it was, but you didn’t think so. “I dunno, lust? That old desire for ownership of her twisted body. Along with just liking being connected for a change, you know? She could make all the difference for me. She and that baby. They could save my life, in more ways than one.”
“Do you really buy the line you attorney is selling you, about her testimony maybe turning around your case? I’ve read your file. The deck is stacked against you. You have a documented history of past violence against your mother. Your own fucking brother will testify that you’d wanted to kill her. For every Cressida who testifies on your behalf, twenty other kids and teachers will testify against you. Tell the court you were a loner and a freak. Then, Officer Collins will testify against you. That will pretty much nail it.
“If you renounce the Mouth, you’ll only live long enough to see the appeals process go through. And I can guaran-fucking-tee you Cressida won’t stay loyal to you through that. She’s going to need a man who can bring in some money to support her. And you’ll die like a dog. You’ll be on a gurney and dozens of eyes will be glaring at you as the lethal injection is brought in. And your death will be nothing but a hollow ceremony. A public humiliation. A warning to others to not go all squishy-gushy. But, of course, it’s a warning that won’t work because those sorts of warnings never work. And you’ll feel terror at the whole thing. Terror you can avoid by just following me. You dolt, can’t you see I’m trying to convince you to do what’s best.”
You wanted him to shut up. You hated his Gargamel voice and his plastic blue robes and the stupid black animals. You were tired and just wanted to go back to your room. So you said the words that you knew would end it all. Spit them out as quickly as you could, through the haze of sedation. “I renounce the Great Dark Mouth. I renounce the Black Room. I renounce the Gift of Plastic-Vision. I renounce Perfect Monsters. I renounce derangement.”
And then a cold, wild wind gusted through the meeting room, howling and tearing the plastic world apart. Flaying the plastic off of you and making it part of the whirlwind. Flaying the plastic off everything and making it part of the whirlwind.
You feared for your life, and realized how odd it felt to fear for your life. You covered your head with your arms. Fell to the ground and assumed the fetal position.
Bits of plastic whipped against you in the whirlwind, cutting your arms. The wind pounded your bones. Dr. Hatton’s briefcase thudded against something. The table keeled over. All the chairs rattled against the wall, against each other, against the fallen table. The footfalls of heavy shoes fell outside the conference room door. You heard knocking.
The wind stopped.
When you looked up, Dr. Hatton was no longer a plastic wizard action figure. He was a tall, thin bearded man around forty, wearing gray slacks and a blue dress shirt and a white necktie. An abstract black pattern was printed on his tie, and—looking closely—you could see the Four Totems of the Mouth inside of it.
He towered over your cowering body. Opened the door.
An orderly (an honest-to-god, flesh-and-blood orderly) stepped through. “What’s going on in here?”
Dr. Hatton glared at you. “I was evaluating the patient, asking him questions. He began to give very strange and unfortunate responses. The next thing I knew, the chairs were all over the place.”
“Okay, mister,” the orderly said, “let’s get you back to the nurse’s station for another shot. Get those cuts on your arms cleaned up. How the hell did you manage to do that to yourself? You use the bottom of a chair leg? You smuggle some contraband in there? I’ll have to search you. You folks are inventive as hell, I’ll give you that!”
You didn’t fight him. There was, in fact, something pleasurable and soothing about the sensation of his fleshy hand on your fleshy shoulder as he led you away. The Gift of Plastic-Vision had been removed from you. Things now looked and felt the way they had before.
The whole thing felt so good, so right, it gave you goosebumps. You felt like you imagined one of those tugboats in the Ohio River felt after it returned to port. There was a sense, inside yourself, of reattachment. Reconnection. It wasn’t that you were returning to your old life. Too much had happened for that to be the case. But you were returning to life, itself.
As the orderly led you away to the nurse’s station, the head psychiatrist passed you. He was on the way to confer with Dr. Hatton. You overheard him ask about the test results.
“He’s the most insane person I’ve ever met,” Dr. Hatton replied.
XXI
There were people who said you were insane and there were people who said you were only pretending to be insane to avoid having to go to trial. There were people who said that even if you were insane, you should be killed because of the menace you posed to society.
There were people who didn’t think you posed a menace to society, but thought you should be killed for other reasons. Once you overheard nurses talking about threatened lay-offs at the hospital due to budget cuts. One of them said that you
should be killed because it cost too much to feed you and clothe you and put a roof over your head. If only you (and patients like you) weren’t there, then the state would have enough money to avoid cutbacks. A second nurse told the first nurse that that was a stupid line of reasoning. If there were fewer patients at the hospital then they’d cut back even more. No, the second nurse said, there should be more patients, not fewer. They should cut back some other hospital. Not yours. Kill some other psycho. Not you (although, the second nurse admitted, it was totally understandable that the first nurse wanted you dead).
Everyone there at the hospital had an opinion about you, and that opinion usually wasn’t kind. Even the other patients didn’t like you. That came as a surprise. They were, after all, folks cut from the same cloth as you. Some of them proudly proclaimed their offenses. They were rapists, arsonists, pedophiles. Like you, they weren’t the greatest enthusiasts of hygiene. They had tangled, unkempt hair and bleary eyes.
And yet, even they gave you a wide berth when you walked out of your room to get your meal tray. Just like everyone in high school did in the cafeteria.
And Cressida—Jesus, Cressida. Of course, the paternity test verified you were the father. She sent you a few letters, after finding out the results. Letters telling you that she honestly didn’t know what she was going to do, that she’d hid the pregnancy from everyone for as long as she could because she didn’t know what to do. Letters saying that she hadn’t really enjoyed your time together as a couple, but that maybe this could be a new beginning. Maybe—with this child; with this boy she was carrying—your life wouldn’t be a total failure. Maybe—once your son was born—she would send pictures. She said her due date was June 27th.
***
Her last letter came on July 3rd. There was a baby picture along with it. He looked like you. Exactly like you. And that’s when you knew you’d made the right decision. It was like another you had been brought into the world. It was like getting a second chance.
But there was something amiss. She told you the baby’s weight and height, but she didn’t tell you his name. Then came the hammer.
Cressida said her parents had indeed persuaded her to give the child up for adoption. She’d finally agreed to it the night before she went into labor. They’d called an adoption agency and had everything worked out at the hospital for an emergency placement.
She said it was going to be a “closed” adoption. The adoption agency would never reveal the identity of the adoptive parents to her. They would never reveal your identity or hers to the adoptive parents, either. Something about that seemed unfair, to everyone. It didn’t seem right. But nobody gave two fucks about what was right.
You wondered how you could be cut out of that decision. Had there been legal maneuvering you hadn’t been informed about, on the grounds that telling you would be against your own best interests? Was it the insanity thing? Did some doctor sign a paper saying you were incompetent to make legal decisions regarding adoption?
You asked to use the phone at the nurse’s station to call your public defender. You got voice mail. You left five messages. He never called you back. It turned out he’d quit being a public defender shortly after your last meeting and you’d been assigned a new lawyer—a lady who said she was just there to represent you for the murder case and that adoption law was outside her scope of practice. You’d have to hire a second lawyer out of pocket if you wanted help on that front.
What were you to make of things? You had a son who would forever be a cipher. What sort of family would he end up with? What would his life be like? Would his parents ever disclose the adoption? Would he go looking for his roots someday and find out about you in the process? Would you still be alive at the time?
You didn’t know. You just knew you had the picture and that it revealed him to be flesh and blood, not plastic. Your flesh and blood. And you found that to be something to celebrate. You vowed that, from then on, you’d be the model prisoner/patient. You’d cooperate. Be as normal as possible. You’d say “Yes, ma’am” and “Yes, sir” to the doctors and nurses. You’d respect their authority over you.
This approach reaped its rewards. The head psychiatrist met with you one day and commented on your “improved adjustment to the milieu”. He said there was a calisthenics class held each morning in the hospital gymnasium. Said you could, perhaps, join in. He could sign a doctor’s order granting this privilege. If you acted up, it would be taken away from you.
“If you agree to join in on these classes, it’ll get the other patients used to seeing you around and not just in your room all the time. Then maybe they won’t be so frightened of you. It’ll be good for your health. Good for your mood, too. Good all around. And it will certainly look good, to the court, if you show them you’re fully participating with your treatment plan. Then they can’t say that you aren’t at least trying to get better. They can’t say you’re faking being sick.”
You nodded. “I’d like to enroll in the class, sir. Oh thank you, sir. Thank you.”
***
“Calisthenics class” was less appealing than it initially sounded. There were a dozen of you in the “class”. You were accompanied by a dozen orderlies. There were basketball hoops in the gym, but you didn’t use them. All you did was walk around its perimeter, like old people at the mall. You were sedated, so it wasn’t like you could run. But you would have liked to do more than just walk. You would have liked to have played a game.
One of the other patients (an old dude with a white goatee) complained. “It’s too long a walk. It’s the Bataan Death March, I tells ya. The Bataan Death March!”
You realized that was a negative way of thinking. You told him so. “It’s not a death march, it’s good exercise. It’s just what the doctor ordered! It’s just a wee merry stroll. What day is this? Is it July fourth? It must be close. We can pretend we’re having a parade!”
The orderlies smiled at you. Giggled in surprise at your enthusiasm in offering up a fun way of reframing the exercise. “That’s right, fellas,” one of them said. “It’s your parade. Let’s pretend you’re downtown, marching with the Shriners and the high school bands.”
And then you hummed “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” You didn’t get it one hundred percent right. You missed notes. You were sleepy from your morning meds. But you came close enough to getting it right that everyone else knew what you were driving at. It started to catch on, beginning with the old man who’d been so whiny before. He hummed, and his humming seemed to put a little spring in his step. Before you knew it, all the rapists, arsonists, and pedophiles in front of you and behind you had started to hum along, too, as they marched.
Acknowledgments
This book is indebted to the work of Edgar Allan Poe (in particular, his concept of “the imp of the perverse”). My thanks to all the teachers in Cecil County, Maryland, in the ’80s (their names, sadly, long-swept from memory), who first exposed me to Poe’s work and arranged for a gaggle of us rural kids to visit Baltimore’s Poe house. Thanks to the actor who showed up that day and performed his Poe impersonation for us. These may seem like relatively small (or even silly) things, but they stoked my childhood imagination.
This book is also indebted to the nihilistic tag-team of Thomas Ligotti and David Benatar. I’m honestly not sure Mr. Suicide would exist without their pioneering work on anti-natalism. (I leave it to them to sort out their feelings about the irony of anti-natalism giving birth to new authors and books.) Likewise, I’m not sure this book would exist without Jack Ketchum and the late Richard Laymon. Laymon’s books were the first to offer me the simple (but important) assurance that it was okay to use deeply taboo words in fiction. Ketchum taught me that extreme horror need not trivialize or sensationalize its subject matter; that extreme horror is just another way of being honest with the reader about how the world (at its worst) really works.
Thanks to everyone who worked in the trenches with me on this one, too. Thanks to the always-reliable A
llen Griffin for his work as a beta reader. Thanks to Ross Lockhart for his invaluable editing insight. Thanks to my friends and readers who provided encouragement (either in person or online). Thanks to my husband for always being in my corner.
Finally, thanks to everyone who got me through adolescence and other rough patches in my life. Your voices have always been louder, clearer, and—ultimately—more convincing than Mr. Suicide’s.
Titles Available from Word Horde
Tales of Jack the Ripper
an anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart
We Leave Together
a Dogsland novel by J. M. McDermott
The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the
Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron
an anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart and Justin Steele
Vermilion
a novel by Molly Tanzer
Giallo Fantastique
an anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart
Mr. Suicide
a novel by Nicole Cushing
Cthulhu Fhtagn! (August 2015)
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Painted Monsters (October 2015)
a collection by Orrin Grey
Furnace (February 2016)
a collection by Livia Llewellyn
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About the Author
Shirley Jackson Award finalist Nicole Cushing has written multiple stand-alone novellas and dozens of short stories. Her work has been praised by the pop culture websites Ain’t It Cool News and Famous Monsters of Filmland. Several of her stories have been selected as honorable mentions (long list) for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year series. Her first full-length short story collection, The Mirrors, is also slated for publication in 2015.
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